The business of sports gambling is a multi-billion dollar industry, which is particularly popular in places like Las Vegas, Nev. where gambling is legal. With the size of the industry comes the need for information, such as the current odds regarding the event to be bet on. Bookmakers use odds to balance the amount of money bet on each team, so as to protect the individual or establishment taking the bet from losing money. Bettors use published odds when deciding whether to place a bet. For example, games where there is a powerful team taking on a weaker team would obviously generate more bets for the more powerful team. Odds are introduced to deter some of those who would place bets on the more powerful team. These odds can be in the form of a point spread (or line), which force the “favored” team to win by a certain amount of points, or the “underdog” to lose by less than those points, in order for someone betting on them to collect. These odds fluctuate as bets are taken, so the total amount of money bet on one team is the same or very close to the same as on the other team. Accordingly, multiple different sports books taking bets can offer different odds, depending on what bets they have already taken. For a prospective bettor, the current odds for each sports book are important because they may want to bet on a game at specific predefined odds. Therefore, odds information for the various Las Vegas and other international sports books are an integral part of the betting process.
Typically, in order to become aware of the lines/odds of a sports book, an individual bettor must contact each sports book and inquire as to the offered odds. While each sports book may have their preferred odds, a bettor may have a different evaluation of the competing teams and desire to place a bet based upon his evaluation of differing odds. By the time the bettor has contacted all of the sports books and decided on a particular one with which to place a bet, the line/odds may have changed. While systems exist allowing a bettor to utilize the Internet for checking odds/lines for each sports book in real time, many bettors find this too time consuming and will forego placing a bet if they cannot quickly find desired odds for a particular sporting event.
However, even after checking the Internet resources for odds published by the various legal bookmakers, the bettor may not find odds that he/she desires to place a bet on a particular sporting event. Consequently, current systems generally require the bettor to seek out a bookmaker and then initiate the placement of the bet with that bookmaker at the bookmaker's published odds even though the odds may not be those desired by the bettor.
Therefore, a system and method of placing wagers utilizing the Internet is needed whereby a prospective bettor can post an offer for a desired wager at specific odds which may or may not correspond to bookmaker's published odds. Further, the system and method would permit bookmakers to view the offered wagers and decide to accept all or part of the bettor's offered wager at the bettor's preferred odds.